Dirty Girl Mud Run

[Catrin]

The event was this morning! It was COLD, it was 41 when my wave got started. I was dancing around to keep warm at the start. Here is what we looked like all squeaky clean, except for our feet. The starting announcer told us that he had never seen feet as muddy as they were before the start of the event. I am the one in the yellow jacket - and my bike-thermal clothing selection was spot on! Everything survived outside of my gloves (and I donated the shoes). Clothing all had to be washed twice!

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Things were different than I expected. I suppose that I expected trails of some kind in the woods where we would run, and then have muddy obstacles. The conditions were far from my uninformed expectations. We had 3 miles of ankle-lower calf deep of almost pure liquid mud to slog through, so there was NO running, by anyone. Mud slogging, mud trodding, but no mud running. I only fell twice but I did get stuck several other times. I noticed that the smaller women like myself were having more problems moving in the mud, where the heavier women appeared to have an easier time of it.

I think the obstacles might have been more challenging if we could have run more between them. There were several tall almost vertical climbs using rope nets, but with my shoulder I didn't do them. There was a 6 foot almost vertical climb that I did do, and pretty much scooted down the other side on my butt - there were wooden ledges I used to help with that. At one point my event partner and I helped dig a woman out of the mud, she was literally knee deep in the stuff! She had slipped while trying to get up a short vertical incline - I actually found a way around it

All in all it was a lot of fun, even if not the kind of challenge I had anticipated. If I do it again it will be to have fun with friends, nothing at all wrong with that!

I didn't get cold nor hot - though at some point my Gore head covering wound up in my zipped back pocket. My cheapo gloves in the first pic were disposed of halfway through the course. I am now, finally, enjoying a beer. They did have free beer there, but I don't drink Bud...

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[Helene2013]

Wow. What a challenging fun day it was, but for the cold start.

[OakLeaf]

Woot woot! Way to go! "After" pictures or it didn't happen!!!

[Catrin]

Woot woot! Way to go! "After" pictures or it didn't happen!!!

The second picture is the "after", we only took those two. For some reason she looks muddier than I do, but we were equally dirty - and if you could see the top/back of my head you would see that I am even dirtier! There WILL be "during" pictures when they release the official event photos Wed or Thursday Hopefully they got me! At least I THINK I hope they got me, because I remember where the event photographer was during the course

[Crankin]

Sounds awesome, Catrin. What kind of obstacles were there?
Your clothing choices sound just right.

[Catrin]

Sounds awesome, Catrin. What kind of obstacles were there?
Your clothing choices sound just right.

I was concerned about being both over and under dressed, but it was fine. So glad all of my expensive technical gear survived, and VERY glad I had them! While I may not be riding right now, I am thankful that I seem to be able to keep finding different uses for all but my riding shorts. That keeps me from thinking how much money I've invested in that portion of my wardrobe

Crankin, the obstacles were interesting. Here is a link that provides a photo of something about each obstacle. We didn't have the "Get Over Yourself" vertical wall. I didn't do all of the obstacles, with my shoulder as it is I wasn't about to try the rope-net almost vertical 20 foot climbs (Get a Grip). I don't have that much upper body strength and I could see the instability/movement of the rope "net" causing clutzy-Catrin to get in trouble with either shoulder or knee real fast. I also walked around the H2OMG - this was the second obstacle and I wasn't about to splash through waist-deep cold water at 41 degrees. I DID, however, go through something that was remarkably similar at the end of the course

Most of the obstacles were insanely easy that had us crawling under or through things, and indeed it was easier to get through the mud that way instead of walking! I tweaked my knee on the Barn Burner, but thankfully it seems fine. Think of this like a 30-35 (or taller) angled bounce house kind of thing but you don't (of course) go inside. There were platforms to help you progress upwards, but a couple of them were really long if you happen to be short like me. I made it to the top however, and scooted down the other side on my already muddy butt -this was the very first obstacle.

In the end it was a lot of fun, even if not as challenging as I had expected. Slogging through the almost liquid mud soup for 3 miles was the unlabeled obstacle and was a challenge in and of itself. I might do this again next year as part of a larger group, just go for the fun of it all :-)

[Catrin]

The theme of the day was, apparently the following:

Slog through deep mud. Fall down sometimes to mix it up, or get stuck because the sucking mud wants your shoes. Get help to free from the shoe-lusting mud. This can be seen in this photo :-) I was fortunate in that I didn't lose my shoes. Some women did, and some just gave up and completed the course barefoot!

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[emily_in_nc]

Congratulations, Catrin! Sounds like you had a lot of fun despite the chilly start. And no worries about not being well-trained enough since you didn't even have to run. Good for you for trying it!

[Owlie]

That sounds like loads of fun. Go you!